


Homefires

by ariadnes_string



Category: Peaky Blinders (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-24
Updated: 2013-12-24
Packaged: 2018-01-05 22:16:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,323
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1099227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ariadnes_string/pseuds/ariadnes_string
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She taught him how to make book, and she taught him how to kiss, though he was a cack-handed sod at both to begin with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Homefires

**Author's Note:**

  * For [voodoochild](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoochild/gifts).



> mild, inexplicit incestuous feelings.

She taught him how to make book, and she taught him how to kiss, though he was a cack-handed sod at both to begin with.

She taught him how to pray, too, and he was better at that. Might have been a priest, that one, with his brains and his self-control. Might’ve been--if the war hadn’t burnt the light of God right out of him.

It wasn’t so much that he learned to kill in France—Heaven knew that ran in the family and he would’ve come to it one road or another. It was more that he’d learned to how to send men to their deaths and make them love him for it. That was something worse.

+++

She watched their frenzy to sign up, bemused. Maybe it was her Romany blood, but patriotism left her cold. What had King or Country ever done for the lads of the Garrison that they should offer up their lives? Just another example of men taking any excuse to leave, if you asked her. But no one did, and she kept her mouth shut.

She lit candles for them all, though. And wrote weekly letters, carefully designed to get news of the family business past the censors. When people came round collecting this or that for Our Lads at the Front, she and Ada gave generously.

+++

Tommy came round in his new uniform before he left, starched and scrubbed and solemn.

He lifted his hand to his canvas hat and said, “Come to pay my respects, Aunt Pol.”

She remembered that hand, pale and a little clammy, brushing across her breast, tentative, as if it couldn’t believe what it was being allowed to do. Reverent. 

“Keep your pecker dry, boy” she said. “What I hear about the whores in France, it’ll fall off just from looking at them.”

“Yes ma’am.” He didn’t smile, but his face took on the glow of one.

She launched herself at him, wrapped her arms around him and felt his coiled strength, along his shoulders, down his back, his thighs. She’d never let him go all the way with her—what they’d done was for education only, so he wouldn’t lose himself over the first girl who gave him the time of day. But, oh, what she wouldn’t have done with him in that moment.

But he only dropped a chaste kiss into her hair, and she knew right then she’d lost him, lost them all. 

The Shelby boys all came back from France, after a fashion, but Polly wore black from that day on.

+++

He had scarlet fever once--had it so bad they thought he'd die. Her ninny of a sister grabbed up Arthur Jr. and scurried off to some friend in the country, scared of contagion, saying “Thank you, Polly,” and “Bless you, Polly,” and “What would I do without you, Polly?” Where the boys' da was, no one knew, even then.

Polly sent Bess off with a kiss. She’d lived with her sister's weakness all her life, and loved her still; her heart near broke in half when Bess died. But Polly had no doubt that Tommy would live; she’d seen the strength in the boy even then.

And live he did, with Polly’s nursing. Once the crisis passed, he lay flat and wan in his little bed, watching her. The sickness had taken his voice, poor mite, and once he could sit up, she brought in one of the boards from the shop, and let him scratch words on it in chalk, so he could have some conversation. He would spend hours drawing pictures of horses, their manes streaming, their feet hardly touching the ground. Racing towards some invisible finish line. She wondered if he dreamt of escape, even then.

On a whim, she thought to teach him how to make book. He was a bit young for it, but she figured it would keep his mind busy while his body recovered. They traded the board back and forth, figuring probabilities, payouts and spreads. The numbers slipped and scattered in his unpracticed hands, but he laughed when they got away from him, a raspy, joyous laugh, like they were sharing a secret. And she laughed, too. How young she was then, thinking smarts and strength of purpose could conquer all.

By the time his mother and brother returned, Tommy had learned enough to start working in the shop.

+++

The thing about Tommy was, he paid his debts.

And so it was Tommy who found her, two days after they took her babies, drunk—her!—staring into the cut, God forgive her, like it was a second womb, beckoning her home.

He caught her around the shoulders and dragged her hard against his body. 

“You’re a mess, Pol,” he said. And so she was: hair lank on her shoulders, her dress stained and dirty. She could smell her own unwashed odor, above the clean boyishness of him. “Let’s clean you up.”

And so he did, like she was one of his younger siblings, not his aging aunt. He drew a bath for her, and poured clean water so she could wash her hair. When she emerged from the tub, she found he'd laid out fresh clothes for her: that was another thing about Tommy, he always understood the importance of being well turned out. With deft fingers, he did up the tiny buttons on the back of her shirtwaist, and fastened her necklace. She only slapped him away when he tried to comb her hair.

"Feeling better?" he asked, watching her twine locks of it around her fingers to bring out the curl.

She nodded.

"Good." The thing in him she'd always sensed was out in the open now, his eyes hard and fierce, a million years older than his face. "Because what they did to you? That is never going to happen to a Shelby again. Not while I'm alive. And you're going to help me, Pol. Because the rest of them, they're good lads, Ada too. But you and me, Polly: we're the ones that'll make it happen. Are you with me?"

He pulled her hand away from her hair and squeezed it. She nodded, feeling all her tears harden into steel.

+++

She thought it might be like that when he came back from France, the more fool she. She knew he’d been hurt, in spirit, if not in body. But she thought they'd help each other, as they always had.

“Looking good, Pol,” he’d said when he saw her again, and it thrilled her more to hear him say that than to hear the same words from anyone else's mouth, even the father of her children. She’d kissed him on the cheek: a sober gesture for a sober occasion.

But she’d felt it even then; something sour and spiteful in him, waiting to explode. 

War seemed to have taught them that women were fools. Made Tommy think she wouldn’t smell the opium smoke leaking through his door; that she wouldn’t hear him leaving at night to visit whores. That she couldn’t recognize the fear he'd brought back with him, starker than any scar.

+++

So she lit candles for them still. For all the boys of the Garrison, since so many were lost, even tucked up in their own beds. 

She dressed herself carefully to go to church. Arranged her hat and scarf just so; did her lips and eyes with the precision of experience. Appearances mattered, even if no one was there to see her except God. He would know she still cared about doing things properly. 

She liked it there, in the flickering lights and echoing spaces. Here she could remember what he'd been like, before France, and the woman she'd been in his eyes. Here, she could summon up the strength to believe that the best of what they'd been, in those days, might come return to them, as a blessing.


End file.
